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Hash

Hash is a dish of finely chopped leftover beef mixed with potatoes or bread crumbs, seasoned, and cooked in fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Hash

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the leftover beef finely.

  2. Mix the chopped beef with potatoes, bread crumbs, or rice.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Moisten with water or soup.

Cook the hash

  1. Heat butter or beef fat in a skillet.

  2. Add the mixture.

  3. Cover to steam.

  4. Remove the cover.

  5. Let it brown on the bottom.

  6. Form into cakes.

  7. Dust with flour.

  8. Fry until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leftover cooked beef
Provides the main meat flavor and the body of the hash.
Potatoes, bread crumbs, or rice
Bulk out the beef and help bind the mixture together.
Water or soup
Moistens the mixture so it holds together and does not dry out.
Butter or beef fat
Conducts heat in the skillet and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Let it brown on the bottom. Browning develops flavor through the Maillard reaction, which needs direct dry heat. Covering the pan steams the mixture first, so the bottom must be left uncovered long enough to form a crust.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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